I was thinking of going there in the next month or two. Where are the safe and affordable places to stay? I wanted to get a place where you can park and leave the car at the hotel and just walk to everywhere. Not some hotel that charges you park either.
Plenty of DC is safe, but good luck finding a hotel like that in the district itself. I think you'd do better picking an outlying town with a hotel by a Metro station.
I stayed at Hotel Harrington back in November 2010 and it was right in the middle of everything. I was on a grant so I didn't have to pay anyway, but it wasn't so obscenely expensive that I found something farther away (was working at NMNH for a week).
Well, I kinda live here . . . There are several reasonable motels on Route 1 in Alexandria just outside of the Beltway, south of the District. They're convenient to the Huntington Metro Station and IIRC a couple of them even run shuttles to the Metro. Inside the district itself, if you find one that's cheap it ain't gonna be a place you want to stay.
HA! I did just that. I got a motel outside the main part of town (in Alexandria) and drove to the nearby metro station and went into D.C. that way. It worked out pretty good.
Metro is the subway, I take it. Does that go everywhere a tourist might want to go, pretty much? That might be a plan right there with Alexandria. Do they charge like an all day fee at the Metro stations?
Yes, Metro is the subway. It goes many places, but not all. You can get to the Mall and museums, it does not go to Georgetown. However, Alexandra has some of the same types of things you might find in Georgetown, and you might not really need to go there. Not sure what you mean about charging a fee. Riding has a cost, which is based upon how far you travel. As far as I know, there is no such thing as an unlimited ride day pass. If you mean parking at the station, then yes, it's probably a flat charge for the day, since most who park are going to be commuters. You can probably find more specific answers on the website: http://www.wmata.com/
Right, forgot about that, and definitely very useful for getting to some of the places not served by Metro (such as the previously mentioned Georgetown).
Thank you for that. I need to research a little more. I don't know what is in Georgetown of interest. I wanted to go to the museums like the smithsoneon(sp). I will probably only be there for a week, so I thought just walk to the things around that area. I don't mind walking as long as it's not a crazy distance.
Be aware that the Natural History Museum has closed its hall of dinosaurs for the next few years so they can renovate it.
When we did DC as a family we stayed at the Cherry Hill RV park in College Park, MD. They have little single wide vacation trailers for folks with out an RV. From there we drove to a metro stop and took it into DC. The negative, and it was a small one, was that we had a bit of travel time each day. The plus to it was that our costs for lodging were really low and where we were staying was very nice. In fact that is how we always vacation with the kids. We find an RV park or small cabins to rent. That's what we did when we vacationed in Estes Park, CO. Sure its a bit on the cramped side with a family of 4, but on the other hand you're really only using the place to sleep and cook a few meals. Other than that you are out seeing the sites.
Estes park KOA cabins were awesome. We only stayed one night in them and camped the rest of the time, but there were two rooms. One of which had two sets of bunk beds, and the other had a queen. I can't remember the price but I know it wasn't bad.
I looked at that campground already. I have a small camper that suits me and the bride but the cost for a campsite is as much as a hotel in that area plus the cost of extra gas for the tow.
Well consider that for a family of 5 the cost was the same, plus we had individual bedrooms and a kitchen. In the end it was less expensive for us.
Yeah, we do a lot of the cabin rental type arrangements. It usually saves money and often gets us more space or freedom. We especially like that type of accommodation if we are on a long drive from point a to b. We'll take it a bit slower and stay at a dew campgrounds along the way. Hotel rooms (along with everything else in this country) are designed for four person families, and I don't like leaving one of the kids in the car.
It's just the bride and myself. I made some reservations at a place in Oxon Hill. I will see how that goes. It's a red roof inn and that is not high on my list but even that is about 80 bucks a night. I went through Priceline and I can cancel up until 1800. Nothing down yet. I was looking at a days inn south in Alexandria, but reading the comments, there was one guy that said " That place is like a Mexican prison, if I had known how bad it was going to get, I would have got into my car and got back on the interstate and driven to the closest rest area and slept in my car." I figured that one was not for me.
HA! Funny Mexican Days Inn in Alexandria story - really! A couple of years ago we stayed at one in Alexandria, about 1/2 mile from the metro, so the location was great. But it was late summer and still hot. Our room was right next to a room with a bunch of Mexicans. Rather than keep their door closed and use the air conditioning, they kept the door open and lounged around shirtless, staring at everyone. I'm guess they had no water in their room, because the body funk was.....nauseating.
